I grew up in and around Portland, Oregon in the 90s. When I was fourteen, I got a job matching hangers to clothes in the warehouse of a discount home goods retailer. I was let go at the end of my first shift: an auspicious start to my life as an employee!
For the next sixteen years I worked as a barista, wilderness survival instructor, adult caretaker, production assistant, waitress, bartender, and other gigs. In my late twenties, I added a BFA to my GED, then I moved to Iowa City to study at the Writers’ Workshop. Since then I’ve taught creative writing at places like Yale-NUS, the University of Arizona, The Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and Portland State University.
My forthcoming book, Delinquents (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 02/16/27) includes meditations on my career as an ambivalent worker and other subjects like poetry, poverty, death, motherhood, and psychotherapy. My previous nonfiction book, Believers (FSG, 2021) tells the story of trailblazers from across the globe who have found new ways to live, reconnect to the earth, and repair ecological degradation in the face of species loss and climate change. Believers was a finalist for the 2022 PEN E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and was Recommended Reading in many publications including The Observer, Outside Magazine, Book Riot, Bookforum, and the New York Times Book Review.
My essays have been published by Granta, The Believer, N+1, The New York Times and recent features in Harper’s Magazine were selected by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson for The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and by Padma Lakshmi for The Best American Food and Travel Writing.
I’m also the author of two books of poetry, most recently, The Fire Passage, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and selected by Diane Seuss as the winner of the Levis Poetry Prize (Four Way Books, 2025). My debut, The Fix, won the Iowa Poetry Prize (2018).
I moved back to Portland a few years ago with Joshua Marie Wilkinson and our kid. Together we edit the Kuhl House Poets Series at The University of Iowa Press.
Stephanie Cabot is both my agent and one of my favorite people. For literary inquiries please contact ny@susannalea.com